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Juggling all the aspects of my life with some baking, writing and good old fashioned ranting thrown in

Thursday, 23 February 2012

The In Laws are Coming

My post title would strike fear into the hearts of many women. Indeed, some of my mummy friends would regard a visit from The Mother In Law as favourably as a visit from the four horseman of the apocalypse. This is mostly because many Mother In Laws are overbearing, critical and, most annoyingly of all, believe that the sun shines directly from their little boy's backside. This is why I am forever thankful for my mother-in-law. We don't have all the same ideas when it comes to raising a child and she has snuck the odd spoon of ice cream into my daughter's mouth when I'm not watching but compared to some horror stories I've heard of monsters-in-law who delight in making their victim daughter in law feel as though she is absolutely the worst wife and mother who has ever lived, I think I'm pretty lucky. She also regularly offers that if the Other Half misbehaves, she'll sort him out. He'd like to laugh that off but I reckon nothing gets to a bloke like being told off by Mummy. Plus, she's fairly complementary about me as the woman bringing up her grand daughter and looking after her son.

News of the upcoming visit next week has, however, sent me into a frenzy of cleaning and organising. Its not that my house isn't usually clean and tidy, its just that my standards change drastically when I know that visitors are expected. My attitude changes from "That'll do" to "It must be perfect!". This may sound strange but the fact that the Other Half is busy getting ready for his amateur dramatics group's performance next week, which he is partially directing and therefore is at home much less than usual is actually rather handy. Don't misunderstand me, I love having him around but my productivity increases by a large degree if he's elsewhere. Of course, The Little Monster doesn't make things easy. I already attempted to make her room look less like some sort of Toy Bomb had just been detonated in there. But within minutes of my efforts being complete, she'd emptied the toy box all over the carpet again. My plan of action is to make sure she's really tired at 8:30 so that she'll go straight to bed and to sleep so that I can carry on with the Great Tidy Up. Added to this, I have a 1000 word essay to plan and write by Sunday evening. Wish me luck!

1 comment:

Good luck, and hope that the visit went well, or goes well if it's not happened yet! I always go into a cleaning frenzy when the in-laws are due, and so does my husband. He is normally fairly messy, but he suddenly wants everything to be minimalistic, so he goes around shoving stuff in cupboards and drawers, meaning that for weeks afterwards I'm constantly finding things shoved in corners!